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"WRG 7th Wot I'd hoped for." Topic


Warrior

18 Posts

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18 Jan 2017 8:43 p.m. PST
by Editor in Chief Bill

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Maxshadow13 Mar 2015 11:05 p.m. PST

Yes its about 30 years too late but I'd all ways wanted to get this off my chest so…
I really enjoyed all those Sundays playing with WRG 6th and thought the 7th edition rules were just as good plus some interesting new ideas.
However when I first heard the rumour that 7th was being developed I had a wish list of features I'd hope the new rules would bring.

First: The need to record casualties which resulted in an unnecessary amount of extra book keeping. I was a fan of WRGs Horse and musket 1685-1845 set with the "bang your dead" figure removal. To me the combat results table could just as easily given a % chance of whole figure removal or something accommodating D6s if necessary.
Second: Hardly ever finished a game of 6th with out a headache caused by multiple moral tests. Again the WRG horse and musket rules helped reduce the amount of work required by specialising the tests for particular situations, for instance, testing to charge etc, now you didn't have to go through every factor for each test.
Third: Super troops. Yes you can use thrown weapons, no you can't throw darts, javelins, caltrops and pilums all at the same time. :) And my chief bugbear, the halberd. If long spear only count for poking in the first round how come these get to poke and keep on poking while still chopping?

Oh well. Off chest now. Often thought about converting the combats results table to percentages to suit my need for quicker easier but never did.

langobard14 Mar 2015 2:36 a.m. PST

I had the great good luck to be going through an ACW phase when 7th came out. You could tell the people trying to play it as they were the ones getting into fist fights before the first move was over, and basically killed the entire Ancients hobby in my neck of the woods until DBA came out. I finally played them in their 'Warrior' incarnation, and found them the give an excellent outcome, but gee, if there was a rules set that almost killed the hobby, it was 7th Ed!

johnpreece14 Mar 2015 3:42 a.m. PST

I really think you ought to give them a fair chance before rushing into print to slag them off.

Porthos14 Mar 2015 3:56 a.m. PST

I have played WRG (4th, 5th and 6th ed.) for years. After realizing that I was STILL looking up things in the rulebook after many years of play I have stopped. But we had a solution for the bookkeeping: every figures represents 20 soldiers. After a unit has suffered casualties the player of this unit throws a twentysided die. If the score is equal or below the number of casualties this counts as a save, otherwise he has to remove a figure. Using this mechanism means no bookkeeping, while statistics make sure that the number of removed figures is about the same when bookkeeping.

Jeff of SaxeBearstein14 Mar 2015 4:03 a.m. PST

Maxshadow,

WRG 7th was my introduction to 'historical gaming' and I played it for years (with quite a bit of success).

That being said, it is a very cerebral game and I would find that I would have a slight headache after playing two tournament games in a day.

Now I prefer much simpler rules . . . and particularly those not written in 'Barkerese' (his text is often in very complex English and not always easy to parse correctly).

But if you want to play it, please do so. Just because many of us have moved on doesn't mean that everyone needs to.


-- Jeff

Sobieski14 Mar 2015 4:30 a.m. PST

Polite way of saying that he often doesn't understand English grammar or punctuation!

Yesthatphil14 Mar 2015 4:36 a.m. PST

I agree. 7th edition was great … took a bit of regearing for some traditional players but well worth the effort.

if there was a rules set that almost killed the hobby, it was 7th Ed!

Ah … that mythical concept the hobby … (different for every wargamer in every place) … Actually, where I was wargaming at the time, 7th prompted a revival of interest in ancients which had been waning due to introversion of 6th edition and its meta play.

Of course the hobby never dies (and if anyone ever threatens to kill it it's the players, not a rule system or other 'controversial' development) ..

I have Warrior but always prefer today's rules to yesterday's and relish the wider variety of choices today's players have …

Phil

Who asked this joker14 Mar 2015 5:40 a.m. PST

I will not say it was great. I will not say it was bad. I will only say that I could not get through the rules. They were just too densely/dryly written. It didn't "kill" anything but with limited choices it barred me from entering Ancients Gaming for many years.

Winston Smith14 Mar 2015 5:49 a.m. PST

Sometimes I want to play a silly little game. Sometimes not.
I used to play all varieties of WRG Ancients and in tournaments. I can never recall ANY time when my opponents were less than gentlemen.

Frankly I do not believe any of these "almost had fist fights" comments.

jameshammyhamilton14 Mar 2015 9:39 a.m. PST

For me 7th was the ruleset that stopped me playing Ancients for at least a decade. I think I played 3 or 4 games, hated it and then got distracted by other things. I didn't return to Ancients until DBM version 1.2.

sillypoint14 Mar 2015 3:12 p.m. PST

7th had some good points, but they threw the baby out, IMHO.
Play Might of Arms now, with house adaptations.

Sobieski14 Mar 2015 5:18 p.m. PST

I'm afraid at the wargames table I've sometimes seen friendships strained to the limit and courtesy smashed beyond repair.

Yesthatphil14 Mar 2015 5:37 p.m. PST

I'm afraid at the wargames table I've sometimes seen friendships strained to the limit and courtesy smashed beyond repair.

I have played ancients for over 40 years … thousands of games in over a dozen countries on 4 continents and I've never seen anything like that at any wargames table.

Give or take the odd exception, wargames usually bring out the best in people …

Phil

Sobieski15 Mar 2015 1:35 a.m. PST

You lucky man.

korsun0 Supporting Member of TMP15 Mar 2015 3:03 a.m. PST

I thought 5th and then 6th were easy to play, but 7th drove me into hibernation for a long time…..

Yesthatphil15 Mar 2015 4:27 a.m. PST

Not luck, Sobieski, not as far as I can tell – but then I'm only talking about ancients and about historical wargaming (albeit thousands of games all over the world*)…

If your experience differs then you must be playing odd games or in odd environments (or maybe you have just been unlucky) …

If wargaming was as you depict it I doubt it would have caught on, worldwide, the way it has …

Phil
*sometimes at events like the Melbourne IWF with over 200 players (so the number of games I've 'witnessed' must run into the tens of thousands … ) …

John the Selucid15 Mar 2015 12:21 p.m. PST

I always felt the problem with 7ed was that people wanted to play the rules rather than simulate an ancient battle with the help of a rule set. This can happen in any game with any rules, a friend of mine playing the "Circus Maximus" board game asked in all seriousness if you could whip a dead horse. The Warrior rules set out to clarify, or maybe codify is a better term, these ambiguous points which in most cases were obvious if you considered what would have occurred in reality.
When DBM was published I had a look at it but it was just too divorced from my idea of historical accuracy, with its mishmash of terms for troop types and insistence on model camps etc.
But I'm quite willing to accept that what I want from my wargaming can be quite different from others.

Maxshadow16 Mar 2015 1:51 a.m. PST

Good point John.

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